Dog Island has no restaurants, no shopping nor pizza delivery. UPS doesn`t even make it to this barrier island five miles off the coast. And there are no supermarkets or other suppliers of life`s necessities. (Bring those with you.)

But the inn has a thoroughly modern furnished kitchen, complete with counter and wicker barrel stools and a dining area. The air-conditioned rooms have private baths, ceiling fans, functional furnishings and private porches with hibachis for grilling and panoramas of the water. The innkeeper can make a TV and cellular phone available, but isn`t the purpose to get away from those things?

You can retreat from the realities like Robinson Crusoe and live off the land and sea -- surf casting or net casting from the inn`s docks. But it`s not as easy as it looks and you might want to enlist the aid of the innkeeper to learn the finer points.

There`s also a charter boat available at the inn for those who want to go for the big ones out in the Gulf. There`s bound to be an inn-mate who brings back the dinner, usually mullet, whose chargrilled aromas fill the porches, building appetites of the guests who are toasting the setting sun.

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Dog Island is a birdwatcher`s paradise, with 200 species sighted. It`s on the migration routes of numerous northern birds and is a great place to observe kingfishers and grebes, a wide variety of ducks, loons, sparrows and warblers. Egrets and herons, terns, gulls, and numerous shorebirds, who nest in the hidden reaches of the beach, are on the island year-round.

The island is one of four barriers off the coast of Carabelle along with St. George, Little St. George and St. Vincent (a federal wildlife sanctuary) by the Big Bend of Florida, where the panhandle is joined to the peninsula.

FOR THE RECORD - ******THE FOLLOWING CORRECTION WAS PUBLISHED APRIL 25, 1993******Because of an editing error, a story in last Sunday`s Travel section incorrectly placed the Pelican Inn in Alabama. The inn is on Dog Island, 50 miles southwest of Tallahassee off Florida`s Gulf Coast. For information on the inn, write Pelican Inn, 5030 Dog Island, Carrabelle, Fla. 32322, or call 1-800-451-5294. The Sun-Sentinel regrets the error.

It is 6 1/2 miles long and never more than three-fourths of a mile wide and has a total of 1,842 acres, 1,300 of which were guaranteed inviolate by a Nature Conservancy purchase in 1980.

The purchase by the Conservancy was promoted by the threat of development, turning the estuaries, marshlands and beautifully isolated beaches into yet another spread of resort homes threatening a fragile ecosystem. There are already some 80 vacation homes on the island, but only about a dozen year- round residents.

Day-trippers come over for the island isolation, anchoring out in the bay, running aground on the beach or going into Tyson`s Harbor, a natural inlet that runs parallel to the airstrip. The well-maintained 2,700-foot grass strip (no fuel) is open for charter trips from Tallahassee, 50 miles to the northeast, or for private aircraft (Airport Identifier X29).

Island visitors make their own definitions of Dog Island, a name shrouded in legend and lore. Was it named by French explorers, sailing in the area 29 years before St. Augustine was settled by the Spanish? They reportedly found such an abundance of wild dogs in residence that they christened it ``Island of the Dog.``

Or did the Native Americans give it that name because they used the island to raise their dogs?

Or were the Spanish responsible, using the island to drop off their ordinary seamen -- commonly called dog sailors -- when they anchored off the mainland to take on water and provisions?

Whatever the origin, the name seems appropriate for the primitive and pristine place.

It takes awhile, of course, to adjust to days of strolling the six miles of powdery white sand in front of the inn, to picking up shells or to finding a shaded, dune-protected hideaway for a midday snooze. Then, by the second or third day, you`ll be ready to just sit in the sand and stare at the gentle

surf.

IF YOU`RE GOING

Getting there: There is a regularly scheduled ferry service from the coastal town of Carabelle with eight roundtrips daily from May 1 through Aug. 31 and six trips March-April and September-October. There are only four trips during the slowest season, Nov. 1 through Feb. 28.

Robert Tolf, whose feature appears monthly, is the Sun-Sentinel`s restaurant critic and the author of six books on country inns, including the recently published Florida Country Inns (Buchan Publications).